1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus connected to a terminal unit through a network such as a copier, a printer, and a facsimile machine, and in particular, to an information display page for referring to and setting various kinds of information in a terminal unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional image forming apparatuses such as for example a copier, a printer, and a facsimile machine include an image forming apparatus which is connected to a network and whose operating state and set information can be referred to by a terminal unit such as a personal computer or the like similarly connected to the network and on which a setting can be further changed by the terminal unit.
Here, an image forming apparatus of today has a very large number of functions and can perform sending and receiving a mail and sending facsimile through a network connection as well as printing.
Therefore, the set information of the image forming apparatus includes not only the setting of various kinds of items of a printer driver in a conventional printer but also various settings such as the setting of connecting the network, the setting of POP3 and SMTP for sending and receiving a mail, and the setting of connecting the facsimile.
Accordingly, for example, in the case of referring to this set information by the above-mentioned terminal unit, information display pages relating to this set information are classified for each category and are displayed as different pages for each category.
Furthermore, to display many categories efficiently, the information display pages corresponding to each category are generally constructed in a hierarchical structure.
Therefore, for example, in the case of referring to set information in an information display page of one category and then referring to set information in an information display page of a different category, it is necessary to once access to an information display page of a category of a higher level and then to move to an information display page of a desired category, which makes operation complicated.
On the other hands, according to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) No. 2003-248730, there is disclosed a content reuse processing system for customizing an information display page relating to the above-mentioned set information.
However, in the content reuse processing system according to JP-A No. 2003-248730, an information display page is customized by a designer of a product and a user cannot customize the information display page after the product is completed. Therefore, it is impossible, for example, for an individual customer to select set information that the user often uses and to customize the information display page.